There are still so many days ahead, yet almost everything important has already been said. Almost, but not quite.
After a modest lunch, the seekers of torment for their hooves continued shifting their current position marker via satellite on the liquid-crystal display of a Motorola-branded pile of transistors.
And no matter how much one of them felt this contradicted his information regarding the behavior of natural phenomena, the movement of air in the direction opposite to the travelers' position marker just kept increasing.
As a result, the behavior of the two vagabonds wandering into the thick of it looked like this: for half a minute you freeze in place, turning your back on the silicone cubes biting into your torso, and when the gust of wind momentarily becomes so laughably weak that it can finally be overcome by moving your lower limbs, you advance 5 to 10 meters. Repeat cycle ad infinitum.
The photo is nowhere near as dramatic as my story
For variety's sake, sometimes it wasn't sand flying into our faces, but liquid: it was raining. If anyone hasn't seen horizontal rain, I recommend it — looks amusing. A glob of spit, for instance, gets carried away for about 10-15 meters.
Tornadoes are swirling all around over the lava fields. The only good thing is that because of the precipitation, the road was more or less packed, and we only had to roll our bikes instead of literally dragging them. And still, in some spots we took such a beating that I suggested to Punk we pitch the tent in some little hollow. Alas, there were practically none to be found — the only place where we had a chance to spend the night was left back around lunchtime, far behind.
My tent is theoretically wind-resistant, but in practice, at this specific moment, there was absolutely zero desire to put that to the test.
Of course, this entire psychedelic experience would have been far from complete if, closer to the end of the road, when we were barely moving our legs from the monstrous, endless fatigue that had taken over every cell in our bodies, an additional bonus hadn't occurred — crossing a ford. In theory, I knew it was there, but in practice, beholding an icy, churning stream of unknown depth during a storm, a stream you are about to ford — it gives some food for thought.
Mixed emotions
Punk, being an optimist by nature, tried to wrap his legs in trash bags, hoping this would save them from getting soaked. I, on the other hand, savvy from reading reports by seasoned bicyclists, and just a more practically minded person, guessed the bags would tear in the very first few steps. Which is exactly what happened.
In the end, I took off my sneakers and crossed the river in Vietnamese trekking socks of a counterfeit NorthFace. This spared my precious soles from the sharp stones that cover the river bottom, but sort of kicked off a series of integrity breaches for the socks, which were later subjected to the same durability test about 10 more times in subsequent fords.
We did, of course, cross the river. It turned out the technologies for this business can vary. You can take off your shoes and go barefoot over the rocks in water barely warmer than zero, and then put them back on, it'll be nice and dry. But it takes a long time. You can wade in thick socks: the soles don't suffer as much, but soaked socks are also a hassle to peel off of swollen skin. You can just walk right through without overthinking it — if the sun is shining, it will dry super fast, because the wind in Iceland never dies down, you get a kind of blow-dry with heating.
We later encountered 5-10 fords a day throughout the entire interior of Iceland, and we got so used to it that we didn't even really stop.
Here at last is a photo that vividly demonstrates how we felt
And sometimes like this
However you slice it, all of this was absolutely not in vain. Only by surviving this extreme can you understand the true nature of Iceland, and the spirit of the people who live here. This day imprinted itself in my memory so firmly, like almost no other journey in my life. In terms of intensity of experience, it can only be compared to the one-day climb up Fansipan or with the trekking through the snow in Montenegro.
Whenever I see this photo, I immediately get goosebumps all over my body. That's just how sensitive I am.
No matter how long this Sisyphean task dragged on, we finally reached the point we were striving for — the Landmannahellir campsite. To be honest, it happened somewhat by chance, because from fatigue I already didn't quite understand where we needed to turn, or which road to the campsite was closer. I could have easily figured it would be easier not to cross the river and just walked alongside it, but everything panned out luckily.
And then another miracle happened, which was the biggest and most incredible one of the entire trip. Which is logical, seeing as right before it we had worthily passed the biggest trial.
30 km of the storm were not in vain
It turned out that we hadn't quite reached the campsite itself, and were trying to pitch the tent near a building with showers to shield ourselves from the wind. Nearby there were a few cabins for sleeping, with the largest and most distinct one standing in the center. I already figured it was the caretaker's hut, but at one in the morning, I didn't feel like going to wake people up and check. Spending the night outside, however, didn't sound appealing either. The brain is wired strangely: if we had arrived earlier, I still would have negotiated sleeping inside, but this mental barrier about "waking people up" didn't let me do it.
Andrey, meanwhile, immediately ran to the shower room to wash his face, as if he were some delicate damsel, and his tender skin had to be as pink and smooth as a baby's bottom. I'll never understand this — we had a real, important task of choosing a place to sleep and pitching the tent, and he runs off to wash his face. Then again, on trips there are always these complications with different points of view, and you can pick the one that suits you yourself, no need to succumb to my propaganda.
After a few minutes of fruitless arguing with Andrey over choosing the ideal tent location, a tipsy Icelander in a sweater ran out of the central cabin, and with an inhuman accent informed us that it's no good sleeping outside in this weather, and therefore we were invited inside.
Overjoyed, I somehow stuffed the already half-unfolded tent away and headed after him. I got yet another lesson that will teach me absolutely nothing: you should never rush. The tent bag ripped out of my hands, fancying itself a parachute, and began rapidly moving away from me across the rocky field and onward into the mountains.
I'm not about to yield in stubbornness to some lousy piece of fabric, so I imagined myself a sprinter and set a personal record in the three-hundred-meter dash. Fortunately, the bag snagged on some rocks and eventually curbed its enthusiasm, otherwise we would have had to stuff the tent into trash bags.
Need I say what happened next? A house where it's warm, bright, and draft-free, calm and kind people who fed us dinner and gave us tea, soft beds and a flush toilet. All of this looked like a completely surreal fairytale, paradise and magic, and almost made me cry.